June 24, 2007 Despite the fun the day before, we were on the road at 7:30am on the way towards South Dakota.We drove the first couple of hours in very dense fog, only able to see about ten or twenty yards in front of us.Just before the fog began to lift, we found ourselves driving through fields with massive windmills in either direction.The first several windmills were so enormous, that with the fog so close to the ground, we could only see the blade closest to...

June 23, 2007Today started out much better than yesterday! Our hosts, Gina and James served some amazing and unique muffins from a local muffin shop. I can only use two words to best describe these muffins "cheesecake center."Also we practiced keeping food away from their enormousbear-sized dog so that we could hopefully know what we were doing when close by actually bears.After breakfast we drove up to Bethany's freshman year college roommate's...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!Well we've made it as far as Aurora, Illinois. I decided to choose the Alcatraz picture again since I feel like we are in prison because we seem to be stuck in Illinois. After some confusion over whether or not we had packed Andrew's glasses we were finally on the road. We went to turn on the radio and realized that it was not working-all it said was COdE. WHO CAN GO ON A ROAD TRIP WITHOUT TUNES!?! So after calling the mechanic who repla...

June 22, 2007 Well the rest of our first day continued with a bang?literally. In Iowa we found ourselves driving through thunderstorm/tornado weather. We even ended up pulling over to the side of the road at one point to wait it out.When we finally reached West Des Moines (literally "west of the Moines") we (okay, maybe just Andrew) were relieved to find that Bethany's friends had a cold beer waiting for us. That night we went out in West Des Moine...

To Iowa...and beyond! We finished up packing this evening, and we've done our best to ensure that REI will have a very succesful fiscal year, and at this point I think we're pretty amazed that we aren't scrambling to get ready. So, uh yeah, we leave tomorrow morning... We're pumped!